Category Archive

Alex Proyas followed up his hit The Crow with Dark City, a similar piece of supernatural noir that sadly got buried in the wake of Titanic. Time has resurrected its charms, lending it cult classic status and allowing us to see just what an amazing accomplishment it is. Roger Ebert declared it the best film of the year, and I’m not inclined to disagree. …

Only one movie today, but it’s a good one. The Lady Eve, Preston Sturges’ delightful comedy about a slick con artist (Barbara Stanwyck) who falls for an earnest (and rich) snake expert (Henry Fonda) onboard an ocean cruise. It’s a high point for all involved, but it’s Stanwyck who dominates with a comedic performance for the ages. It opened today …

It’s another slow day, so we’re going to go with a 80s thriller that holds up reasonably well. The Hitcher stands as a case-in-point example of why you should never ever pick up a hitchhiker. Good Samaritan C. Thomas Howell stops for a guy stranded on the side of the road in the rain, only to soon realize that the guy …

A very quiet day is marked by a single notable western: How The West Was Won, following a family of settlers over the course of several generations as they journey from New York to California. It’s sumptuous and grand, as you’d expect from MGM, and was rewarded both with immense box office success and a trio of Academy Awards. The soundtrack …

Sometimes, it takes a royal jackass to stare the gibbering maw of evil in the eye and send it back to the howling pit from whence it came… even if said jackass is a barely employable stock boy with a chainsaw for a hand. Sam Raimi’s immortal Army of Darkness opened today in 1993.

One of the greatest screwball comedies of all time hit theaters today in 1938: Bringing Up Baby, the tender story of an heiress, a paleontologist and a pet leopard that shows what kind of magic Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant could bring to the screen. Though viewed as a flop at the time, it actually did decently at the box office, …

Stagecoach is one of those movies whose influence kind of creeps up on you. Not only did it cement a number of Western conventions that later went on to become clichés (Monument Valley settings, cavalry arriving at the last minute, etc.), but it made a star out of John Wayne and turned director John Ford into Hollywood legend. It also featured …

Because nothing says “I love you” more than serial killers who wear their victims’ skin… Before Silence of the Lambs opened, it looked shaky in the extreme. The source material — a bestselling potboiler by Thomas Harris — was terrible, Jodie Foster got the female lead only after fighting like mad for it, and Anthony Hopkins was still largely considered a stage …

Frank Langella — who played a pretty mean Dracula himself — summed it up best. “It’s Bela’s cape. The rest of us are just keeping it warm for him.” Horror legend Bela Lugosi starred in the role that defined his career (and to a large extent defined the character) in Tod Browning’s Dracula, which premiered today in 1931. In other news… …

A big day for movies starts with the one of the most problematic. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation opened today in 1915, marking a seismic advance in motion pictures as a technical art form while simultaneously pushing a narrative so grotesque it causes one to despair for humanity. Film students are obligated to watch it. Once. Everyone else can …